ONE
Ten Months Earlier
“Well, I don’t think they should call her the Goddess of Thunder.”
Rhea sits up in her bed, fussing with the mask covering her nose and mouth to get a better look at the article on the laptop screen and the image accompanying it.
“You don’t?” My little cousin glances at me like I am simple. It’s her customary ‘you’re a dumb adult’ look obscured only by that paper mask. But I know this kid. I know her expressions better than my own. There is only a pause and then she returns her attention to the article, moving her head to the right as though that would help her form a final opinion. “Why not?” I ask her, pushing the screen back with my thumb as I nestle closer to her.
“It’s just stupid. They call Thor, Thor. Just Thor. Not ‘Thor, God of Thunder.’”
“They do so.”
When she gets flustered, mildly worked up, her eyebrows move and the smallest hint of her skin brightening makes her cheeks pink. She does this now, and I’m not sure if it’s from her irritation at my teasing or the mild infection that has her skin clammy.
“They don’t,” she says, wiggling up the mattress to turn her body toward me. “I mean like in regular chats. You think Jane says ‘Oh, Thor, God of Thunder, grab me a lemonade while you’re in the kitchen.’ She just says, ‘Hey, hot stuff’ or ‘Yo.’”
“Hey hot stuff?” She nods, eyebrows pinched together above that pale green mask. “So… no one says ‘hot stuff’ anymore. Where’d you hear that?”
A small shrug as though she’s already moved on, and she slips back down against the pillows. “Dad was watching ‘The Dukes of Hazard’ again last night while Mama was out at the store.”
She’s already forgotten her point, scanning the article again. To look at her, anyone would think she was a normal, albeit thin eight-year-old. She is far smarter than she should be, but Rhea has spent most of her brief life reading books and comics while stuck in the isolation of her bedroom or, on the occasions that her platelets were too low or some weird infection took hold of her, at the pediatric ward at Cavanagh Regional Hospital. Marvel.com might be a little above her reading level, but no one can lecture the kid on being a kid. Not when she’s always been expected to tackle the cards dealt her like a war weary solider.
“Well, don’t say ‘hot stuff.’” She offers me only the slightest eye roll and giggle when I give her elbow a soft nudge. “It’s not the 70’s.”
“What should I say?”
“Nothing. You should read your comics and watch Firefly.”
Her fingernails are thin, barely covering the tips of her fingers when she waves her hand, telling me with one small gesture that she doesn’t need me lecturing her. “I’m not a baby, you know.”
“Of course you’re not. But you have plenty of time for ‘hot stuff’ and ‘yo.’” When those eyebrows lower further, I shoot a quick glare at her, already knowing why some of the shine in those dark eyes has dimmed. “Don’t give me that. You’re doing fine.”
“Two more rounds of chemo and I’m done.” She moves deeper into her pillow, forgetting the small challenge I level, the one she hasn’t been too eager to take lately. “Again.”
I don’t like this negative attitude. It’s understandable, it’s expected, but Rhea thinking even remotely that she won’t win this battle goes against everything I know of my cousin. It’s simply not who she’s ever been.
“Hey,” I tell her, setting the laptop on the foot of the bed. “What did I tell you about grumpiness?”
Most kids her age would pout, protruding bottom lip and all. But Rhea isn’t most kids. She hasn’t been afforded that luxury. “That it’s useless.”
“That’s right and why?”
When I continue to stare, waiting for her response, the kid shakes her head. Crossing her arms is as close to a pout as Rhea will get. “Because all it does is send bad juju out into the world.” When I nod, that head shake doubles. “Claire said the catechism teacher told her that there was no such thing as juju or making things real just by speaking them out loud.”
“Yeah well, Claire’s catechism teacher is Mollie Reynolds.” It’s nearly impossible to keep the affected tone from my voice. Mollie Reynolds was an idiot and a huge gossip in high school. “I went to school with her. Trust me, she’s a big dummy.” A small laugh bursts from her that she tries to conceal behind her thin fingers, despite the mask. I go in for the double kill to keep her laughter loud. “She doesn’t even have a library card. I checked.” That was the highest offense anyone could commit in Rhea’s book, and the tidbit worked. My cousin’s eyes widened as though she couldn’t believe anyone would do without access to the library.
Mollie Reynolds and her post-high school recovery is easily forgotten as Rhea sits up again, pulling a small stack of comics I bought her a few days back—the covers already smudged from multiple readings—onto her lap.
“So, what can I bring you back from Autumn’s?”
“Declan.” The kid isn’t remotely ashamed of herself. Since Declan came into our lives two years ago, Rhea’s been very blatant about her mild crush, as most kids are. She sees no reason to fake offense when I or Autumn tease her about her love for the stubborn Irishman.
“Goofball, he’ll be jetlagged.”
“He owes me a rugby lesson.” Rhea tosses two Firefly comics at her feet and I grab one, flipping through the colorful pages while she copies my motion with another Dark Horse comic I can’t quite make out.
“He’ll get around to it, you know that,” I tell her, keeping my voice even. It would be pointless to tell her the same thing my aunt and uncle have been saying for months now. Rhea knows everything she wants to do, especially anything athletic, will get pushed aside until after her treatment. “Declan doesn’t welch on his promises.”
“I can play, you know.” She pauses only for a second, glancing in my direction before she grabs another comic and I make a mental note to stop by Marty’s to check out the new arrivals.
“I have zero doubt about that.”
It’s the small moments like this one, chatting with Rhea, not really saying anything that we haven’t gone over a hundred times, that are the sharpest and clearest in my mind. But then when the future is as uncertain as hers, it’s these moments that are the most comforting.
Plenty of amazing things come in life. There are some moments that are brought into focus first because they are so monumental. But it is the mundane, the modest pleasures from our lives that matter the most because they remind us that even the simplest of lives can be extraordinary. With my little cousin sitting next to me, I realize how beautiful unexceptional moments really are.
That’s why I make a point to spend some time with Rhea every day. The few hours I am with her, sitting and chatting about comics or books or television shows, or the very important topic of Declan Fraser—who Rhea is convinced she’s going to marry one day—reminds my cousin that her life can be normal. It is not all doctors and appointments and the medicine that wears her down. This time together, just the two of us, reminds her of what a normal life is and how remarkable she is to live in it.
She has stopped reading the comic and a glance at her face tells me she’s wondering something but still taking a moment to figure out how to ask about it. It’s her way, being thoughtful, and it’s how she usually gets the straightforward answers she’s seeking. This is no typical eight-year-old. There is a very old soul peeking behind those big, dark eyes and that tiny frame.
Her small fingers drum across the shiny cover of her comic before she stops to glance at me. “Do you think Autumn will marry Declan one day?”
It’s not the first time she’s asked this. It won’t be the last, and sometimes I think Rhea believes she’ll pull a different response from me if she keeps at it. But Autumn is my best friend, and Declan started proposing to her months after they began dating. There’s no way an altar isn’t in their future. “Sorry, kiddo.” Even with the mask, I pick up her frown as the comic in my hands hits my lap. “That’s pretty much a guarantee.”
“Oh.”
She’s too young for wrinkles, but I’ve noticed the faintest lines creasing in the center of her forehead lately. Worry, stress, they are a part of all our lives now. I should be used to seeing the same expression in the mirror on my Aunt Carol’s face. Still, no matter how used to that frown I get, I don’t have to like it.
“He has a brother, you know.” I can see her cheeks pushing up her lower eyelids under the mask. “And, he’s younger.”
“How much younger?” Rhea’s squint is forced, a little over exaggerated.
“Still too old for you.”
A quick raspberry in my direction and she picks up her comic again. “You’re no fun.”
“Oh? So I can take these back to Marty’s?” I reach for the pile of comics—some old school Gen 13, some issues of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that her illness and its various treatments had kept her from reading regularly. She’d devoured them after only a couple of days of returning home from the hospital, and already they looked old and well loved.
“No, don’t do that.” When I don’t move my hand from the top of the stack, Rhea tilts her head, pleading a little with one look as though that will have any impact on me.
It totally does.
“Fine, but don’t be insulting.”
“I guess you’re kinda fun.”
The tease works and we laugh, but then the laugh turns into a small cough which turns into a hack, and Rhea sits up, tears off her mask to cup her hands over her mouth, curving her back as the coughing increases.
“Careful,” I say, rubbing her back while the phlegm and mucus breaks loose in her chest. “I don’t like the sound of that. You need a breathing treatment.” But when I make to leave, Rhea grabs my wrist, head shaking frantically as the last of a wheeze keeps her silent. “What?”
“Not yet, okay?” She inhales, hand on her small chest. “Wait for a little bit.”
“Why?”
“Just wait until you leave for the barbeque.” She blinks, rubs away the moisture on her eyelashes before she smiles. “Just a little bit longer.” There is a small whoosh of air that rumbles the pillow when she leans back against it, keeping her palm over her heart.
The coughing worries me. It takes Rhea longer to get over illnesses, with the cancer and chemo weakening her immune system. The bronchitis she had months ago has left a lingering cough, one that requires breathing treatments when the hacking gets too bad. I hate seeing her suffer. I hate feeling useless. “Maybe I should stay, skip the barbeque.”
“No. It’s stupid here.” She barely lifts her hand from her chest and waves, dismissing my argument before I’ve had a chance to make a good point. “Why should you be stuck here too?”
“Rhea…”
She shuts me up with a shake of her head. “I want you to go so you can remind Declan about my lesson.”
Three comics and a box of Kleenex fall to the floor when I reach for a fresh mask for her from the side table. “You just want him to bring your UK chocolate.”
“It’s so sweet.” Rhea’s voice is still a bit raspy, the words broken when she speaks, but she seems calmer, even helps me slip the white elastic straps of the mask behind her ears. I don’t let her see my frown when even that simple action leaves some of her hair between my fingers.
“Yeah, I know.” This most recent treatment is making her hair fall out. It hadn’t grown out much since the last round of chemo, but in the past year things had gone well. It had been the longest time since she was diagnosed four years ago that she’d gone so long without the cancerous masses returning. Now her hair came to just below her ears and there were thin spots around the crown. She catches me looking over her scalp and frowns.
“I’m going to shave it.”
“Then I will too.” I don’t hesitate, shrugging like the concept is no big deal.
“No. That’s dumb. You have all that pretty pink hair.” Rhea grabs the ends of my hair, curling a wave around her fingers. “Why would you shave it?”
“So we match.”
She releases my hair and rests again against the pillow. “We match enough.”
“If I shave my head then we’ll be twins.”
“You’re just saying that because we’re the only ones in the family who look the same.”
It’s true. Between my parents’ rainbow coalition of adopted children—Asian (me), black (my twin brothers, Booker and Carver), Cuban (my sister, Adriana) and Guatemalan (my sister, Alessandra), and Rhea’s folks’ adopted child, Rhea, and their natural daughter Claire, our family is a weird little ethnic anomaly. Eighty percent of Cavanagh’s residents are Irish, including my parents and Rhea’s. So our diverse family make up has us standing out. Eight years ago when my Aunt Carol brought Rhea home, I instantly gravitated toward her.
“She comes from Shirakawa-go, Sayo. Just like you. You might even be related.”
I hadn’t cared if we were. I hadn’t cared if she was Japanese or Bulgarian or lily white like my aunt and uncle and my parents. I only knew that little Rhea was the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen and a sudden, blinding need to protect her, to guard her from the world fell upon me. I was still a kid myself, no more than seventeen, and had no clue where I was headed in life. I only knew that this baby was a shadow of my younger self. Maybe she was the echo I left behind in Japan.
Then came the news four years ago, when Rhea had already taught herself to read, when the prospect of day school and Pre-K had the girl twirling around my aunt’s den dizzy with excitement: Aunt Carol had spotted a deviation in her Rhea’s left eye. Then came the MRI, more exams and the discovery of a brain tumor along the optic nerve. Bilateral optic glioma, inoperable. Chemo, low white blood cell counts, and low platelet measurements, have become commonplace in our lives since then. When the platelets are very low, Rhea is sequestered in her room and everything must be sterilized. When they are very bad, with no sign of improving, she lands back in the hospital.
“I don’t want you to shave it.” Her voice is quieter now and I adjust her pillows, fluffing them before I rest on my shoulder at her side. Again she picks up one of my pink waves and runs her fingers through the end. “I want to color mine when it starts to come back again.”
“What color? Pink?” I tug on a fallen strand of my pink hair from the pillow next to Rhea’s head. I should have already gone in for another re-dye, but Rhea’s latest relapse had kept me from most all activities that didn’t include sitting with her or taking her to appointments while my aunt and uncle worked to find funding for the experimental treatments the doctor’s wanted Rhea to try if the current treatments failed yet again.
“No, not pink,” she says, stifling a yawn. “Pink is for you.”
“Okay, so you want to do red? Maybe orange or green?”
“Purple.” She dropped my hair, turning on her side to face me. “We’ll be twins but not identical.”
“I like that.” Another cough begins, but isn’t as severe as the last one and she lets me hold her hand. I don’t like how cold her skin feels or the way she shrugs off the blanket when I pull it over her shoulder. “Let me get Aunt Carol. You need a treatment.”
“Fine…” she finally says, but the word drops off in another rapid fire cough that has Rhea kicking the blankets from her legs and pointing to the metal bin on the floor.
“You want her now?” I ask, handing het the bin as she rips off the mask to spit out the mess her coughing has produced.
She gives me a sideways look full of irritation but doesn’t argue. “But then you have to go. I don’t want you to be late for the barbeque.”
She wants to be alone, something Carol told me she’s been asking for a lot lately. The comics, the books, the debates on names of fictional characters just aren’t enough anymore. I’m scared nothing will be.
“You want that lesson that bad?” I ask, wiping her mouth with a Kleenex.
“I want that chocolate.”
A NEW FALL semester in Cavanagh ushers in beginnings and endings—kids embarking on the start of their college experience, parents subjected to the deafening quiet in their homes where there had once been teenage noise and commotion. With September comes the lingering of summer, the only a hint that the tight grip Mother Nature seems to have on the heat will eventually give way to milder temperatures.
The day has me baking and the six block trek to the house of my best friend’s father seems longer with the heat thickening the air. Still, I do enjoy the scenery. Our town is small, no more than 10,000 inhabitants. Residential areas meld effortlessly into the university campus, which in turn gives way to the older part of town that hosts retail shops, pubs and small cafes.
Beyond that lies an even older section of town with smart little well-maintained Victorians and Craftsman, all at least seventy or eight years old. This is where Joe, Autumn’s father, lives. Beyond the fence line of his backyard, beyond the reach of this older residential street, are mountainous ranges that peek and stretch so tall that they disappear into the sky, dislodged from view by the billowing sweep of clouds.
I never tire of seeing it in any part of town, but here in Joe’s neighborhood the view is the clearest. It’s here, at Joe’s, that Autumn chose to host a small barbeque for us to welcome her boyfriend, Declan, home properly from his two-week trip to Ireland, where he’d been sent to fetch his newly revealed half-brother, Quinn.
Quinn, who was two years younger than Declan, had spent a big chunk of his deceased parents’ estate on drink and women. No, that made him sound like just a run of the mill bad boy. Quinn was out of control. The amount of drinking, drug use, and sleeping around was not only threatening his health and well-being, but was also becoming an increasing embarrassment. Autumn had shared with me horror stories from Declan about how his half-brother would go for days shit-faced drunk or drugged out of his mind, waking up in a bed where he didn’t even know the name of the girl—or girls—with him. The estate trustees wanted him out of the country and on the straight and narrow, and realizing that he had an older half-brother in the States apparently gave them the “out” they needed to make sure the estate didn’t get completely squandered. I myself had no idea why they thought Declan would be the right person for the job. He barely keeps up with the varsity rugby squad he captains and his final semester studies at Cavanagh University. But, Declan being Declan, went to Ireland to take care of this unearthed family business anyway.
Despite wanting to see my friends, my steps slow as Joe’s small house comes into view. Maybe it’s Rhea and her having to undergo chemo yet again that has me hesitating to climb the steps to the front porch. Most days I’ve just wanted to stay with her. It’s why I’ve taken a leave of absence from my job as library director at CU, why I haven’t seen much of my friends in the past few months. It’s the worry, the real fear that Rhea’s condition will worsen while I’m out, and I won’t be there when she needs me, that keeps me anxious.
“Rubbish,” Uncle Clay would say. “It’s not your job to look after her, love.”
That didn’t stop me from wanting to.
Uncle Clay would often give me a wink and a nod of understanding, and despite his protests that I shouldn’t take so much time from my job, I got the feeling that both he and Aunt Carol appreciated the help I gave them. It isn’t an easy thing, tending to a sick child, especially one who has spent more than half her life in and out of hospitals. That obligation becomes monotony. That worry becomes dread. There was no way I was going to leave my aunt and uncle to face that on their own, especially since my little cousin looked up to me the way she did. And not when I knew, deep down, that the time I had with her was limited.
So it’s Rhea, yet again, who occupies my thoughts, even as the front door swings open and I’m greeted with Joe’s sweet half-smile.
“There she is,” he says, sweeping me inside before I have a chance to change my mind about attending the barbeque. “Told Autumn, I did, that you’d be along.” A tight squeeze on my shoulders and Joe has me through the den, the kitchen and out onto the back porch before he’s even paused speaking. “Knew you’d come to welcome home our Deco, didn’t I, love?”
Joe turns, holding up one finger and is down the steps, making for the small table holding cups and bottles of wine, soda and beer next to the porch and I’m left on my own, taking in the neatly outfitted back porch and patio.
A large pergola connects the porch to the back of the house, made of recycled timber that Autumn told me Joe rescued from a demolished barn just outside of Sevierville. My best friend and I helped Joe last spring, decorating the space with dozens of large pots brimming with blooms of fragrant flowers and hedges that line the perimeter of the fence and along the steps that lead to the covered patio. He had complained only mildly about the fairy lights we weaved through the breaks in the pergola and the chunkier solar lights we fastened in the branches and limbs of the large oak that hung nearly over the entire yard and swept against the ground and planked flooring that made up the back porch. He didn’t mind so much, Autumn told me, about the palette table and kitchenette Declan helped us build along the side of the house or the repurposed wicker chairs and table Autumn found at a garage sale for fifty bucks.
It has a homey, comfortable vibe, and with the mouthwatering scent of barbeque wafting in the air and the sudden lick of a breeze rustling my hair off my shoulders, I begin to relax, to feel less guilty about being here and not with Rhea. Suddenly, I feel something else on that wind. It isn’t the heat of summer that has sweat collecting against my lower back. It isn’t even the humidity that clouds in the air, or that replaces that small reprieve of cool air with something akin to a waft of heat from a fire. It is something deeper, more significant, that I feel the second I step off the back porch and onto the patio.
I’m so distracted by the sensation that I don’t bother to acknowledge Donovan, Declan’s best friend standing at the back of the yard, or pay much attention to the slumping shape of a man I pick up out of the corner of my eye next to him.
Yet something prickles up my neck, like the quick breath of a stranger passing you in the congested crowd of a subway car. I can’t quite put my finger on it, can’t tell if it is the day, or the excitement that we are all finally back together for the first time since Declan had left for Ireland. Whatever it was leaves me feeling on display, as though something thick, something weighted has taken the air around us and turned it still and faint.
“Here you are, love.” Joe offers me a drink, momentarily distracting me from that odd feeling that someone watches. No, not just watches. I am being gawked at, am the center of someone’s focused attention. “Now then. How are you?” the older man continues, holding my arm at the elbow. Joe is mildly flirty, but Autumn swears he’s harmless. And bored. Very, very bored as of late. “How is your bitty cousin?”
A small squeeze of my fingers against Joe’s thick forearm and the man takes a small step back, though he still keeps hold of my hand. “The same, I’m sad to say, but not getting worse, I don’t think.”
Joe makes the sign of the cross and his grip on my fingers tightens. “Don’t you fret, love. The Good Lord has a plan for everyone, even the smallest among us.”
I don’t argue. There is no need. I’d stopped debating my elders, or their priests a long time ago. Their assertions never wavered, and I’ve discovered that long held beliefs, those taken on out of tradition and obligation, not research or logic, were the toughest to penetrate. I have no idea why Rhea is sick but I suspect God isn’t the one that made her that way. Still, whatever His plan, I couldn’t say I agreed with Him.
Joe sips on his beer, shaking his head as he awkwardly tries to defuse the slip in mood, and his toothy grin returns. “Tell me if you’ve heard this one then… erm… how do you make an egg-roll?”
It’s his way, telling jokes that are more corny than funny. It’s the only way he knows to offer comfort—with that sweet laugh and silly sense of humor.
“You push it, Joe.”
“You do, don’t you, love?”
And Joe laughs at himself, nudging me once again as though nothing in life had been funnier than his stupid joke. Joe Brady is one of my favorite people on the planet. He is kind, gentle and always smells of wood smoke and the brandy he isn’t supposed to drink. Autumn says the woodsy smell is from the constant landscaping he does, burning limbs and leaves to keep his place and his neighbors’ neat when no one else is up to the task. It’s hard to remember that Joe hadn’t always been good or kind, having left Autumn and her mother for most of her life, but the past two years he’s mended fences and has quickly become an important part of our lives. All of our lives.
I take the kiss on the cheek he gives me with as much grace as I can muster. He’d go on telling me corny jokes and trying to convince me of God’s plan for Rhea all afternoon if I didn’t break away from him.
Just as the wind shifts again, Autumn appears through the back gate followed by Declan with his arms full of cases of beer. “Hey you,” she says and I gladly take the hug she gives me. It is long, firm and I smile at her reaction. You’d swear it had been weeks since I’d seen her last, not just this morning when she and I had our customary breakfast with our friends Mollie and Layla.
“How is she?” Autumn asks, brushing her fingers in my pink hair to push away the few strands that had flown across my forehead. My friends worry over Rhea nearly as much as I do. It’s hard not to. The girl has an infectious personality and a quick, easy laugh. Two summers ago when Rhea was six, we took her white water rafting in Jefferson County and then stayed at a nice cabin with views of the Smokey Mountains. By lunch the next day Rhea was in love with Declan, and all of my friends were convinced she’d grow up to conquer the world. We’d eagerly agreed to be her minions.
“She still wants your man.”
Autumn has a warm laugh, one that isn’t forced or faked. I’ve always loved that about her. “Well, she can’t have him.” She winks at the man in question as he smiles our way, handing over the cases to Joe to place on the table.
“Which I told her. I even suggested that she set her sights on Quinn since he was younger.”
“Oh, honey, I wouldn’t wish that even on Heather.” With Autumn’s curled lip I laugh, shaking my head at the attitude she still has about Heather Matthews, the manipulative bitch who tried to blackmail Autumn into staying away from Declan when he first came to Cavanagh. Last I’d heard Heather had hooked up with Autumn’s ex, Tucker, and then later my ex, Sam. Good riddance on both accounts.
“That bad, is he?”
She slips her gaze across the patio, then quickly focuses on me again, seeming unwilling to pay more than a second’s attention at Declan’s errant half-brother. “Girl, you have no idea.” Autumn dips her head, stepping closer as though she is afraid someone will hear her. “He and Declan haven’t stopped fighting since I picked them up at the airport. Other than the ride to the store for more beer, we haven’t had more than an hour alone this whole time.”
“That sucks.”
“It really does, friend. Oh but listen to me babbling. You were just with Rhea?” She steps closer, rubbing my back. “How are you doing with all of this?”
I don’t want to burden her. Autumn would be mad if I told her that’s what I am thinking, but that’s just how I navigate my thoughts. Sorting them on my own, fracturing apart what should and shouldn’t be done, who to tell about my frustrations and worries, it’s all how I manage my life. Autumn has been my best friend since we were kids. I can tell her anything, but Rhea’s illness, and focusing on getting her better is far more important to me than harping on how I feel about it all. People get sick all the time. I could easily. There is no reason to burden my best friend with all the things that bring me the greatest amount of fear. So, I deflect.
“She’s running out of comics. I’ve got to pick her up some more.”
Autumn knows me too well, manages to keep from frowning, but the glare is there, the worry that I’m not being honest with her. Still, because she knows me, she doesn’t dig, doesn’t prod into what’s really in my head. Now isn’t the time.
When Mollie comes through the back gate with her boyfriend Vaughn at her side, Autumn is distracted with greeting them. I take that moment for the reprieve it is, sipping on the beer Joe served me, steeling myself against the questions I know will come.
Mollie greets Joe, mumbles to Autumn about Layla and why she’s absent from the party, but I don’t pay too close attention to them. My thoughts are scattered, frayed with the continuous urge to get back to Rhea. It’s that central focus, that desire that distracts me, that has me forgetting anything until the sensation from earlier returns, the same one that hadn’t completely died when Autumn distracted me.
The wind kicks up only slightly, brings a small gust that moves the table cloth on the picnic table and disturbs my bangs again, picking up my hair so that I have to pull the ends together to keep it from flying all around my face, all while feeling the strange sensation of being watched.
I block everything—Joe laughing with Vaughn, Mollie and Autumn’s whispered worry about Layla—I am too curious to know where the sensation comes from and how to be rid of it. Shifting my gaze around the patio, I pause only for a second on Joe at the grill and then to Declan and Donovan across the patio, beers in both their hands. And then, just like that, the sensation intensifies and suddenly I find I can’t breathe.
There is a small flush moving across my skin, and the fine hairs on my arms and near my scalp stand at attention. As my gaze slips to my left, away from Declan, from Donovan, it lands on the man next to them. And there it stays.
Autumn had described Quinn O’Malley, saying that he was just as beautiful as Declan, just as tall and athletic. But the dark color of their hair, the fierce shine in their eyes is where those similarities end. Where Declan is broad, massive, Quinn is slender, lithe. He has the body of a runner, all long, lean muscle, thick thighs, limbs that dominate, tower, but it is his eyes, the piercing sharp stare that flies straight at me, that has me forgetting who and where I am for a moment. That gaze penetrates, it seduces, it leaves me stunned. There is no real expression on his face. Nothing that tells me he wants me, no smirk or smile, no typical manner that announces what Quinn thinks. There is only that stare and the delicious threat it promises.
In that moment I feel every movement of his gaze, the one that penetrates me, keeps hold of me like I am is a potential conquest. Like I am his to own, a likely possession. That is a feeling I have never wanted, never toyed with needing. Still, I can’t help but catch my breath with how beautiful he is.
But Quinn, Autumn has related, is trouble—an entitled trust fund kid with too much money and too much time on his hands. He is the brother Declan never knew he had; the legitimate son of the man Declan’s mother had tried to steal for her own. Declan had been raised by his mother and aunt, then by Joe when the situation went bad. But Declan had managed. He’d done what most survivors do: he endured. Quinn, Autumn had said, had never been made to endure a thing but privilege, and he’d squandered a big chunk of his parents’ hard earned savings in the process.
Looking at Quinn those revelations echo in my brain. Autumn’s voice in my head warns me to stop staring at him. It is Declan’s and Joe’s heavy brogue that insists I remember what men like Quinn offer—heartache and misery. These are rational observations my brain makes. They are loud, fiercely stern, but that still doesn’t pull my attention from that beautiful man. Sire of heartache and misery or not, Quinn O’Malley is a beautiful, beautiful man.
One look tells me all I need to know—those fingers are long, uncalloused, meaning he’s never done a hard day’s work. Those eyes are unlined and no wrinkles crowd around his mouth, meaning he’s likely never had a worry aging his face. His mouth is wide, the bottom lip plumper in the center, the cupid’s bow pronounced. Quinn’s jaw is angular, sharp and his chest and shoulders are finely sculpted, as though some artist had carved him with precision.
Look away, idiot, drums in my head and I finally manage to pull my attention away from O’Malley when Declan and Donovan block him from my view. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to know what they’re saying to him and when Quinn spits at the ground and storms into the house, my suspicions are confirmed. They’ve warned him not to mess with me, probably mentioning how fragile I am, how Rhea’s illness makes me worthy of kid gloves—and unwelcome pity.
“Sayo, love,” Declan moves to greet me and the frown he hurries to hide as he kisses my cheek tells me he still sees me as delicate.
“How was Ireland?” I mean to distract him, keep that sad little grimace off his face. I even manage a smile, but it feels forced and awkward.
“Ireland was grand. The company, though… ah, well, my brother is…” the Irishman pauses, rubbing his fingers through his hair. “He’s a pain in the arse, is Quinn.”
“You know,” I say, forcing myself to maintain the smile I don’t quite mean, “I remember Autumn saying the same thing about you not so long ago.”
“Aye, well, I grew on her, didn’t I?”
Now I’m the one to frown, but half-jokingly. “Not the visual I want.” He shakes his head, laughing at my lame response. “Besides, maybe Quinn will grow on you.”
“Oh I’d not hold my breath on that hope, love. I’m likely to suffocate him whilst he sleeps before too long.”
“Seems a waste,” I say, glancing back at the house, near the gate as Quinn emerges from behind it with an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. Instantly my stomach rumbles with a sensation somewhere between excitement and disgust. “Although maybe if you beat him enough he’ll start to appreciate how precious life is.”
“Sayo…”
I wave at him, disregarding the concern in his tone, offering him a grin. Everyone knows how I feel about smoking, but it’s his business what he does with his body. Why should I care? Still, thinking about Rhea hacking and coughing, struggling for a clear breath while Quinn wastes his own, makes me angry, rational or not.
I try to keep from bristling as Declan tries to sooth me. “I’m fine,” I tell him, nodding at Autumn when she joins us. “A little maudlin today, is all.” I spot Mollie and run to greet her, knowing full well that Declan watches me, likely wondering why I haven’t spoken to any of them about Rhea’s illness. It’s been four years since my cousin was first diagnosed, but only four months since the doctors told our family that the cancer had returned and the tumor had doubled in size.
No one wants to tell the truth. Not when you’re a kid and wide-eyed and eager with hope for all the impossible things in life. No one tells you that some kid your age in China sat in a sweat shop, their fingers bleeding, their family starving as they sew together the pink and green swimsuit your mother buys you for your first swimming lesson. No one tells you that in order for you to live in that big white Victorian with the wrap-around porch and twenty foot high ceilings, that some woman in another land had to sign away her rights to you. She had carried you inside of her, but couldn’t keep you. Maybe she had loved you, but had signed the paper full of words she might not have been able to read, had signed away the claim she had on you. Just so you could live in that Victorian and wear that swimsuit and eat in abundance. But no one tells you that after all that, you still might have everything taken away from you too.
My parents love me, but even they never told the truth. They never mentioned how tough life forces you to be. They never made me realize what a gamble it is to love blindly, completely. They never told me that loving Rhea as I did would mean I would have to deal with losing her, and that in losing her, I’d lose a part of myself.
Rhea has eyes shaped exactly like mine. She has the same small cow lick at her temple, and skin the exact color of mine. She could have been me at eight, and now I was having to watch her die a slow death. My friends, no matter how much they love me, would never know this. Not really. Yet, they had their own struggles, their own demons to exorcise. I wouldn’t bother them with mine.
And so, I don’t.
Mollie talks a mile a minute. Laughing when Autumn fusses at Donovan for some other stupid thing he’d done to Layla that had kept her away from the party.
“Wonder if he and Layla will ever figure out that they want each other.” Mollie’s smile is effortless, sweet, and when her boyfriend Vaughn stands next to her, the affection in her expression only strengthens.
“Didn’t take us that long.”
“Sugar, I wanted you the second I saw you,” Mollie answers, weaving her arm around his thin waist.
“Yeah? So did I.”
“Well Layla and Donovan have been doing this dance around each other since they were kids.” She takes a sip of her water, head shaking as Donovan withers under Autumn’s fussing. “Sometimes I think they’ll never get to it.”
That was the way of things with my friends: Declan and Autumn carrying on like they needed to touch each other every so often to maintain a normal heart beat. Mollie and Vaughn casting long glances at each other as though they could hardly believe the other was smiling the same smile right back at them. Donovan and Layla being stubborn to realize that all the teasing, all the insults and pranks they leveled at each other, was the longest bout of foreplay to ever happen in the history of Cavanagh. And me, smiling wide, laughing with my friends, loving them for the support they offer, all while hating myself for holding my own burden to my chest because it was mine to carry.
It is dark when I finally leave and Joe has asks twice if I want him to drive me home, just one time more than Autumn and Declan asked. They are sweet. And stubborn and mostly all drunk. So I slip from the house before anyone notices I’m gone, jotting down a reminder in my phone to meet Autumn in two days for a Saturday breakfast she made me swear I’d show up for. She understands that I need space, but that doesn’t mean she’ll let me keep sequestered for long.
The sweltering heat has eased, but I still knot my hair to keep my neck cool and tangle my pink waves at the back of my head as I move down the front porch steps, breathing easier now that I have left the party and everyone’s attention. But then I am accosted by a plume of cigarette smoke that wafts right in my face as I come to the street light on the corner of the sidewalk.
Quinn O’Malley is leaning against the light pole, flicking ashes on the ground, stretching his arms over his head as he exhales. The light from overhead casts shadows onto the pavement and his silhouette is one of glorious precision and finely honed perfection. Too bad all that beauty is attached to a smoking, entitled asshole.
Though I know it’s rude, I pull my collar up, covering my nose and mouth from the stench of the cigarette as I walk behind him, hoping he won’t notice me pass.
“This bother you?”
Walk away. Keep quiet and walk away, I tell myself, knowing that it would be sensible to ignore him, that Autumn and Declan have warned everyone what a prick Quinn is.
“Yes,” I say unable to help myself, turning around to face him. “It does.”
He holds the smoke between his fingers, squinting at me, likely at the small snarl making my top lip quiver before he takes a drag. “And why is that then?”
“Because,” I say, “It stinks.” Quinn pushes off the street lamp with the cigarette still between his fingers and I try like hell not to notice the thick scent of his cologne cutting through the reek of tobacco. “It’s rude to smoke out in the open where someone can pass by you and be subjected to…” I wave my hand in the direction of the cigarette, “that disgusting thing.”
“Is it now?”
“Yes.” My fingers itch to yank the cigarette from his hand and toss it on the ground. “That stench lingers on your clothes, in your hair, on your breath.”
Something about my accusation gives him pause, draws a half smile from Quinn. “Why is that your concern?”
“It’s not…”
I try not to watch the slow slide of his tongue against his bottom lip as he takes a step towards me. “In fact, I’d say you’re the last one that should be fussed over the state of me or the way I smell.” Quinn stands right in front of me and that erotic scent of his cologne drags my thoughts away from the putrid smell of smoke. “My breath, for instance. Unless you’re keen to snog me, is really not for you to worry over, is it then?”
A small image flicks through my mind, but I push it aside. “And why in God’s name would anyone want to kiss you, least of all me?”
“Not sure, am I? You just strike me as the tightly wound sort. Been a while, has it, love?”
There is the smallest hint of humor in his tone, along with the challenge. It makes me step forward, eager to knock that grin from his face. “That is none of your damn business.”
“Nor is me and my fags yours.” He lifts the cigarette at me as though I wouldn’t know that slang word meant cigarettes before he stamps it out with his foot. “Best you keep to your own business, unless you change your mind about that snog.” Quinn is only inches from me now, invading my space, soaking up the air around us and I suspect he is anticipating my upset. Maybe he thinks that being domineering will somehow intimidate me. It does not and I don’t flinch, don’t move even a finger as he comes closer still with his warm, tobacco drenched breath heating against my face. “Were you to ask, then I’d throw these buggers away without a second thought.”
“For a snog?”
A quick jerk of his chin and that humor is gone from Quinn’s expression as though he thinks I’m serious. As though he wants me to be. “Snog, fuck, whatever your willing to give up.”
He’s no different than half the players I’ve come across at CU. The same attitude, the same smugness and faux vows to give up something they enjoy just for the pleasure of my time or the thrill of my touch. It’s all bullshit. The same bullshit that kept me a virgin until I was eighteen and unattached for the most part since then.
I know Quinn O’Malley wouldn’t give up anything for me. That doesn’t mean I can’t lead him on.
I take pleasure in the surprise that registers as I slip my fingers into his pocket, as I pull out his pack of smokes and free a single cigarette. He accepts it when I place the filter in his mouth, though he squints again, moving his gaze from my fingers to my face like he expects me to insult him.
“If a snog from me will keep you off smoking…” I choose not to acknowledge the fuck comment, instead lighting the cigarette and shoving the pack and lighter back into his pocket, “then you best keep at it. My lips will never, ever touch yours.”
Two slow steps and the scent of him dims. I’m nearly a block away before I glance back. There is a faint plume of smoke lingering about his head, but the cigarette dangles in his hand. He is watching my movements. I feel that on my neck, my face, my body as he watches me and I tell myself as I walk away that I don’t care in the least that he does.